Vietnam’s internet governing body VNNIC said that the number of Vietnamese domains as of August 9 was 1,006,306.
An IDN is a web address that uses characters not included in the basic Latin alphabet such as Latin characters with diacritics, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic characters.
Users have been allowed to register Vietnamese domains free of charge since April 2011.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) introduced IDNs in May 2010 and the number of registered IDNs reached 5.2 million in 2013.
Although the number of activated Vietnamese domains exceeded one million, only 153,108 websites were using such addresses as of July 2014, said VNNIC Deputy Director Tran Minh Tan.
However, he noted that the usage rate of Vietnamese domain names has been on the rise over the past three years.
Tan said the VNNIC is planning to introduce more free services such as redirection, web design template and DNS hosting, to encourage the use of Vietnamese web addresses.
In addition to clarity of meaning, Vietnamese web addresses, which are fully supported by popular browsers, can help enterprises promote and protect their brands in a more effective way, said Tan.
